A Comparative Study of Happiness from the Perspective of Ibn Arabi and Seligman

Happiness is one of the concepts that has long been widely reflected in various Eastern and Western traditions, including in novel spiritualist currents, especially Seligman's positivist psychology. This concept, which has been mentioned and emphasized many times in the Qur'an and hadiths, is also emphasized in Ibn Arabi's mysticism in the form of words such as Sorour, Farah, Vajd, Behjat, Bast, Lezat, Showq and Rezayat (All of them mean happiness, pleasure or satisfaction), and it means the joy and heart pleasure that result from and knowledge and closeness to the right. In his works, Ibn Arabi considers one of the characteristics of true scholars as having constant happiness and continuous joy. Seligman considers happiness to be a factor in mental health and one of the desirable results of positivist psychology, and he believes that experiences containing positive emotions reduce negative emotions such as depression, despair, and pessimism and increase psychological abilities and virtues. The research method has been extracting the features of the concept of sorour (happiness) from the works of Ibn Arabi and the concept of "happiness" from the works of Seligman and then comparing them with each other. Similarities can be seen between these two views, such as: introversion, correcting the attitude towards life and paying attention to the empowerment of moral virtues and relaxing attitudes. However, there are also differences between them, including the fact that Ibn Arabi considers lasting happiness arising from the inner, spiritual and divine matter to be the result of acquiring moral virtues and resemblance to divine attributes, spiritual behavior and knowledge and closeness to the right while the concept of happiness in Seligman's thought is psychological and has a behavioristic function.